Friday, February 12, 2010

Publisher: Self

On the Net she found a Mumbai publisher that offered to distribute her book and create an online presence for it.

The small religious town of Haridwar has proudly lapped up the attention brought in by the literary efforts of its diminutive but spunky resident Mona Verma. As a child she had been left in her grandparents' care as her parents settled in the UK. The child who was always curious and fond of reading was smothered with the love and affection of the senior couple, though the feeling of being abandoned never did leave her. And when the choice to move to the UK did present itself, she found herself declining it, having finally made peace with her humble but rich existence in India's religious capital, under the watchful and doting eye of the older generation.

Writing was always a cathartic experience. Her grandfather who was not well versed with the Queen's language diligently made his weekly trips to the local railway station, buying all the new English books that the bookseller had stocked up. Mona recalls how he would proudly lug home the latest James Hadley Chase and Harold Robbins for a Class V student, unaware that those were strictly “adult fare”.